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Suggested Citation Radcliffe, Mike, "Resistance and Accommodation: Protestant Responses to Nazism" (2007). All Volumes (2001-2008). 40. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/ojii_volumes/40

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the The sprO ey Journal of Ideas and Inquiry at UNF Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Volumes (2001-2008) by an authorized administrator of UNF Digital Commons. For more information, please contact Digital Projects. © 2007 All Rights Reserved Resistance and Accommodation: call society is in fact a product of our own making, only existing because we exist, and Protestant Responses to Nazism only persisting because we collectively agree that it should. Berger develops his corollary Mike Radcliffe about religion’s distinctive place by arguing that it functions as a “sacred canopy” – a Faculty Sponsor: Dr. Theophilus C. Prousis, socially constructed order of reality that Professor of History embraces supernatural power as central. It is called a canopy because it is protective – Among Germany’s Christians in the those who embrace it are shielded from the early twentieth century, Protestants were the 1 terror of chaos, the insanity of a world most prevalent. was bound to without meaning and order.4 There is a Germany’s history and society in the man of problem, however; as Berger puts it, “All and the sixteenth-century socially constructed worlds are inherently Protestant Reformation, and the Protestant precarious.”5 And because they are church had since been a key force in precarious, they require social processes to constructing a moral universe for the German maintain their stability. One such process is nation into the twentieth century. However, what Berger calls “legitimation”: “socially Hitler’s conscious construction of a new objectivated ‘knowledge’ that serves to moral order directly challenged that universe explain the social order”6 or the social process by virtue of nationalism, allegiance to the by which ideology is used to give legitimacy Führer, racism, and eventually a war of to extant social institutions (i.e. family, conquest and genocide. His aim was total government, academia). Berger goes on to say control, but “Nazi claims of success in that “religion has been the historically most converting the nation to their set of values… widespread and effective instrumentality of were exaggerated,” argues Alan Bullock, legitimation… by locating [social institutions] “The clearest expression of this was the split 2 within a sacred and cosmic frame of in the Protestant churches.” Nazism reference.”7 In addition to many other social confronted Germany’s spiritual leaders with a institutions, German Protestantism upheld and difficult choice: they could either capitulate supported the secular government – both in and marry Protestantism with Nazism, as did the early twentieth century and in the four the German Christians, or they could hundred years since the Protestant explicitly reject Nazism and face persecution Reformation. The implications under Nazism at the hands of the state, as did the Confessing are disturbing: Robert P. Ericksen and Church. Susannah Heschel write, “Most important, Peter Berger, an eminent scholar on [the clergy’s] role involved moral suasion: the sociology of religion, posits that “Every Through the support for Nazi policies human society is an enterprise of world- articulated by many religious leaders, building. Religion occupies a distinctive place ordinary Germans were reassured that those in this enterprise.”3 That is, the complex web of relationships and functional roles that we 4 Berger argues that the sacred’s even deeper 1 Andrew Chandler, ed., The Moral Imperative; New opposition than that of the profane is that of chaos, for Essays on the Ethics of Resistance in National Socialist “profane” supposes a universe of meaning where its Germany 1933-1945 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview opposite is the sacred, but chaos supposes no meaning Press, 1998), 3. and provides no organizational strategy for experience. 2 Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New 5 Berger, 26. York: Vintage Books, 1993), 319. 6 By “objectivated,” Berger means the process by 3 Peter L. Berger, “The Sacred Canopy” in Sociology which certain ideas take on the force of truth by of Religion: A Reader, Susanne C. Monahan, et al., society’s collective agreement that they are true. Ibid., eds. (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall 26. Inc., 2001), 23. 7 Ibid., policies did not violate the tenets of Christian Reich, argues that in this syncretism of faith and morality.”8 Christianity, Nazism dominated because it When Hitler was elected Supreme entailed the most significant real world Chancellor in 1933, the Protestant church yet pressures (i.e., arrest and murder of had a long-standing history of compliance and dissenters), whereas Christianity, their submission to the German state. Luther construction of otherworldly pressures (i.e., himself had been a strong advocate of salvation and damnation), could be more apoliticism and in his day “[t]he role of the easily molded to suit the needs created by Church… lay simply in the ministry of the Nazism’s demands.12 Here the social process sacraments and the preaching of the gospel. of legitimation overrode theological and The prince was the summus episcopus, with philosophical consistency and replaced power over the property, ecclesiastical Christian morality with what Claudia Koonz jurisdiction and doctrine of the church.”9 has called the “Nazi Conscience.” German Protestantism thus favored hierarchy As early as 1935, congregations were and authoritarian government and thus it moving for the expulsion of Jews from shared Hitler’s pain in Germany’s 1918 defeat churches that putatively should have been and the subsequent, weak . ethnically German; the expelled would have For both the German people at large and its to form their own ethnically-boundaried Protestants, liberal democracy was associated Jewish congregations.13 In 1939, German with defeat and shattered pride, whereas the Christian leaders signed the Godesberg authoritarian Kaiser was associated with Declaration, an ecclesiological document that strength and patriotism. “For many “aimed to transform the Protestant church into Protestants, Hitler’s promise of a structural a tool of racial policy.”14 German Christians regeneration of the nation, his call for thus avidly supported Hitler and the Nazi sacrifice and unity, met the need of a state, including its racial discrimination, the revitalized faith that the churches could no war effort, and even the Final Solution. longer satisfy from their own enfeebled Unfortunately for them, however, the Nazi resources.”10 state was uninterested in them, as at least The German Christians, those Nazis and Protestant radicals like Dietrich Protestants who combined Christian Bonhoeffer recognized the absolute with Nazi racial ideology, most explicitly incompatibility of Nazism and Christianity.15 demonstrated this church-state legitimation Koonz notes that the Nazis “spurned their and collusion. They committed themselves to collaboration.”16 the political supremacy of by Hitler had no respect for Christianity adding “nature and history”11 to what counted beyond the institutional stability of the as divine revelation. This stance resulted in a Vatican. “Taken to its logical extreme,” he church whose organizing principle was Nazi said, “Christianity would mean the systematic racism rather than biblical theology. Doris L. cultivation of human failure.”17 Ever Bergen, in her work Twisted Cross: The politically keen, however, he understood that German Christian Movement and the Third ninety percent of his subjects were

8 Robert P. Ericksen and Heschel, Susannah, eds., Betrayal: German Churches and (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999), 4. 12 Ibid., 11. 9 Chandler, 3-4. 13 Ibid., 24. 10 Bullock, 220. 14 Ibid., 24 11 Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German 15 Ibid., 1. Christian Movement in the Third Reich (Chapel Hill, 16 Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press, 2003), 213. 1996),11. 17 Ibid., 381. Christians,18 and before 1939, “Hitler inclusion of nature and history as part of virtually never mentioned three controversial God’s revelation to humanity: themes that shaped his political agenda: crude anti-Semitism, contempt for Our protest… must be directed Christianity, and preparation for a war of fundamentally against the fact conquest.”19 Instead of expressing his (which is the source of all individual contempt, he spoke of “Positive Christianity,” errors) that, beside the Holy meaning “something vague and undoctrinal… Scriptures as the unique source of love of neighbor, social welfare, and so on… revelation, the German-Christians It was useful to put it in, because it committed affirm the German nationhood, its nobody to anything and at the same time history and its contemporary sounded attractive to all who were against political situation as a second source atheism, blasphemy, sacrilege, and loose of revelation, and thereby betray morals.”20 Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it themselves to be believers in this way: “The great masquerade of evil has “another God.”24 played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, The domination of official church channels by historical necessity, or social justice is quite the German Christians and their alteration of bewildering to anyone brought up on our both pushed the traditional ethical concepts…”21 It was in this Confessing Church to organize according to way that Hitler subverted Germany’s moral the terms of the Barmen Declaration. world with “The National Socialist gospel… Due to Hitler’s duplicity, the Nazi of manipulability and manipulation.”22 state was able to coexist in relative peace with “Despite their precarious location the Protestant Church at large (obviously, between the disapproval of some fellow they had no problems with German Protestants on the one hand and the Christians, except perhaps annoyance) – but annoyance of the Nazi leadership on the peace was short-lived. Article 24 of the Nazi other, the German Christians maintained a Party Program states, “We demand the significant presence throughout the years of freedom of all religious denominations in the National Socialist rule.”23 Their presence State insofar as they do not endanger its managed to create a lot of trouble for anti- existence or violate the ethical and moral Nazi Christians as well as contribute to the feelings of the Germanic race.”25 The Nazis formation of the Confessing Church. “In July therein demanded an expansion of the state’s 1933 Protestant church elections… traditional role as the aforementioned summus Representatives of the German Christian episcopus. The apostle Paul wrote that movement won two-thirds of the votes cast.” Added to their political strength was their Everyone must submit himself to the doctrinal repugnancy (to orthodox believers). governing authorities, for there is no Karl Barth, as the theologian of the authority except that which God has Confessing Church, explicitly rejected their established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

18 Consequently, he who rebels against Beate Ruhm von Oppen, Religion and Resistance to the authority is rebelling against Nazism (Princeton, New Jersey: Center of International Studies, 1971), 3. what God has instituted, and those 19 Koonz, 79. 20 Von Oppen, 3. 21 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, trans. Reginald Fuller (New York: The MacMillan 24 Karl Barth, The German Church Conflict, trans. Company, 1967). T.H.L. Parker (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 22 Von Oppen, 68. 1967), 16 23 Bergen, 2. 25 Von Oppen, 25. who do will bring judgment on part of the church’s vocation was themselves.26 to give order and meaning to human existence.31 This mandate “became the very foundation of political abstinence in the Third Reich,”27 as The declaration marked a break with four- many Christians were essentially apolitical hundred years of German church-state and reticent to engage in any sort of political collusion by denying the Nazis “power over action or resistance. However, under the property, ecclesiastical jurisdiction and Nazism’s totalitarian claims, “Nothing, no doctrine of the church.”32 It was this direct aspect of life, was allowed to be unpolitical. It challenge to the Nazi dictatorship that became was a new religion against the old.”28 A Nazi the founding document of the Confessing leader of adult education in Silesia wrote that Church, a community fundamentally and “our entire struggle for a transformation of the openly at odds with a brutal and ruthless people to the National Socialist way of regime. Its story undoubtedly “provides thinking will remain elusive as long as these insight into the tensions between individual studies with their church-political conscience and loyalty to the state, between reports exist, we ask for permission to pull moral beliefs and political responsibility.”33 this place apart.”29 Permission such as this Even within the ranks of anti-Nazi would eventually be granted and the church Protestants, however, there was anything but would not be allowed to withdraw into its univocality – radicals “wanted to send a protective apolitical sphere. This expanded message… that the Christian church had no interpretation and implementation of the room for Nazi ideology” whereas moderates state’s historical role in church affairs disparaged exclusion and advocated leading challenged long-held assumptions about the “misguided ‘German Christians’ back into the proper order of society – here führerprinzip30 fold.”34 “Most Christians,” concurs Doris clashed directly with both church doctrine and Bergen, “in Germany did not share [Dietrich] historical tradition. Bonhoeffer’s conviction about the Protestants repulsed by this fundamental opposition between those two infringement responded with the Barmen worldviews…”35 It thus cannot be supposed Declaration of May 1934 which affirmed that all members of the Confessing Church were hard-lining anti-Nazis in the same way [Karl] Barth’s claim that Christ, that Bonhoeffer, Barth and Niemoller were. and the knowledge of him gained The members’ “behavior [was] guided not through the Bible, was the only only by strength of conscience or love of authority of the church and that the humanity but by fear, nationalism, and human knowledge of God gained through weakness.”36 Some would commit, like the Bible was the only source of Bonhoeffer, to organized, violent resistance, revelation… Most important, the but many remained in the sphere of church denied that the state had a uncertainty and inaction. “The fact is well right to impose a totalitarian order known that the vast majority of church on all aspects of human life, since members… never got beyond the first stage [of passive resistance], and that only a tiny handful progressed through all five stages 26 Romans 13:1. 27 John S. Conway, “The Role of the Churches in the [from passive resistance to revolutionary German Resistance Movement,” in Chandler, 12. 28 Von Oppen, 5-6. Underline original. 31 Barnett, 54a. 29 Barnett, 81. 32 Chandler, 3-4. 30 “[Führerprinzip] gave Hitler the right to make 33 Barnett, 6. arbitrary decisions [and instituted]… the concept of a 34 Ibid., 54. personal and unconditional loyalty to the Führer.” 35 Bergen, 1. Bullock, 75. 36 Barnett, 6. conspiracy].”37 It was the “utter fearlessness” Moltke declared of his conviction in the of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, according to Peoples’ Court that “it is for [practice of the Beate Ruhm von Oppen, which made them Christian ethic] alone that we stand the only group condemned.”43 It would be unjust, however, to judge who behaved in the way that in that it was only those who took the most retrospect many seem to think that extreme positions were respectable. only logical Christian way to “Historians [in attacking passive Christians] behave. They refused to bear arms, have perhaps not been sensitive enough to even to work indirectly for the war, [the] pervasive sense of fear.”44 It is one they even refused to give the thing to look back on these events and decide German salute or to pronounce the what would have been the best thing to do, words ‘Heil’ and ‘Hitler’ together. and quite another thing to have lived through The majority of them were arrested it and made moral decisions with the very real and about a quarter of them were possibility of resulting in imprisonment or killed.38 death. “When one is in real danger one simply cannot afford to act on rumors or hearsay.”45 “In the background of the debate,” assessed a argues that a broad definition of 1935 Gestapo report, “stands the general resistance combined with a social history problem of the relation between church and approach “demythologizes resistance to a state, of political and religious worldviews.”39 large extent, taking it out of the realms of There were many, though by no means unreachable heroics down to the level of a majority, among the Confessing Church and ordinary people”46 – and that is my intention. its allies who fiercely dissented from the claims of Nazism and actively expressed their In August of 1937, Heinrich Himmler, dissent. Perhaps the two most famous people head of the SS, issued a decree that made “the who did this were Martin Niemoller and giving and taking of Confessing theological Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer lamented the exams illegal and declared the seminaries… church’s complacency: “She (the Church) was illegal as well.”47 This made the theological silent when she should have cried out because training offered by the Confessing Church a the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to criminal offense – punishable by deportation heaven.”40 Originally a pacifist, Bonhoeffer to a concentration camp. In 1941, the Nazis was eventually compelled to participate in the finally closed the Kirchliche Hochschule (the 1944 Stauffenberg plot to kill Hitler. Alan Confessing Church Seminary) and held a Bullock places Niemoller among the givers of series of trials for faculty and students sermons which were “Among the most implicated in its activities. Confessing Church courageous demonstrations of opposition lawyers defended them on the basis of their during the war.”41 Along with Niemoller and “national qualities” rather than attacking the Bonhoeffer were men such as Bernhard legitimacy of Nazi legality, making many of Lichtenberg, a Catholic priest who was those being defended upset at the deliberate arrested because of a prayer he offered for the misrepresentation. Heinrich Vogel, tried for persecuted Jews,42 and Helmuth James von crimes against the state, said, “Basically, Moltke, who was connected along with I’m… a fearful man, rather than someone Bonhoeffer in the plot to kill Hitler. Von who thirsted for heroic achievements. But I

37 Chandler, 30. 43 Ibid., 63. 38 Von Oppen, 17. 44 Chandler, 26. 39 Barnett, 68. 45 Von Oppen, 32. 40 Chandler, 49. 46 Ian Kersahw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and 41 Bullock, 832-3. Perspectives of Interpretation, 204. 42 Von Oppen, 42. 47 Ibid., 87. know situations where I didn’t have any other bound to this life and this world. “Jesus choice.”48 Christ,” reads the Barmen Declaration, “as The Reich government and police witnessed by the Scripture, is the one Word of purged Christian leaders who did not God which we hear and obey and in which we conform. Lay members were sent to trust in life and death.”52 It has already been concentration camps. Youth groups were noted that few individuals fully embraced this arrested because they infringed on the Hitler imposition of spiritual reality upon the Youth’s monopoly of permissible teenage temporal plane, yet it is clear that the activities. A church denouncement of Hitler Confessing Church at least aimed at such a published abroad, “The Hitler Memo,” was goal. retributed by arrests and a murder. The A difference in the spiritual center of Gestapo attempted to have a woman deported gravity, so to speak, illustrates the theological for ringing church bells for the imprisoned reasoning underlying the political Niemoller. She was later arrested for involvement of either side. On the one hand, performing a courier mission for the German Christians, whose center of gravity Confessing Church “and was banished was here on earth, were fully entrenched ‘forever’.” In Nazi Germany, [she] recalled within the Reich – loyal to the Führer, ironically, ‘everything was forever’.”49 submitted to the Reich Bishop. Conversely, Confessing Church leaders compiled the the Confessing Church, whose founding Fürbittenliste, “a list of church members and document placed their allegiance in the pastors throughout Germany who had been supernatural world, was deeply apolitical. interrogated, arrested, or otherwise harassed “The Fürbittenliste rarely included the name by the Gestapo.”50 It grew with time and was of someone whose activities posed political read as a prayer list during Confessing Church problems for the church. This became most services. evident after the July 1944 attempt on Hitler’s Doris Bergen is critical of the life; then the names of those implicated who Confessing Church for its lack of political had Confessing Church connections (most mobilization despite the unyielding threat of notably, Dietrich Bonhoeffer) remained the Nazi state. “What is the value of religion,” absent from the lists.”53 she asks, “and in particular of Christianity, if Both the “earthly” politicism of the it provides no defense against brutality and German Christians and the “heavenly” can even become a willing participant in apoliticism of the Confessing Church can be genocide?”51 In part, Bergen has failed to explained with Peter Berger’s theory of respect the internal claim of a religious legitimation. The German Christians embrace tradition concerned ultimately with the eternal of Nazism at the expense of theological fate of human beings. However, wherever consistency and doctrinal purity makes them Protestants stepped into the role of “willing the more obvious example as a sociological participant” they violated both Bergen’s force blatantly altered the nation of their moral expectation and their own. It would be religion. The explanation for the Confessing inaccurate, however, to group Confessing Church’s behavior is only less obvious if Protestants into this group of “willing considered without the lens of legitimation, participants” as this is a description of the for their attempt at a strict separation of the outright compliance of the German political and religious spheres was nothing Christians. For the Confessing Church, more than an attempt to remain submitted to however, spiritual reality was inextricably earthly governments in keeping with the Apostle Paul, legitimizing a grossly illegitimate government without changing 48 Barnett, 94. 49 Ibid., 77-86. 50 Barnett, 63. 52 Barth, 10. 51 Bergen, xi. 53 Barnett, 90. their doctrine. Whenever they became within the churches’ ranks for the ideological political, however, as Bonhoeffer and perversions of Nazism, this sentiment was Niemoller did, blunt moral rage took never effective enough to deter Hitler or his precedence over the forces of sociology and associates from carrying out their major abstract theology and it is thus these men who objectives.”57 It seems, though, that had the are celebrated as heroes of resistance. organized Protestant resistance of the mid- Thus, it is understandable that the 1940s been allowed to pursue its course that Confessing Church “rallied less against positive political ramifications may have National Socialism than against the German ensued for the nation of Germany. It was not Christian denomination of institutional that the Protestant religion became a Protestantism.”54 The Barmen Declaration participant, but that a perverted version of it was completely ecclesiological and did not did – a version that rewrote some of the specifically condemn Nazi injustices and religion’s fundamental claims. Is it reasonable barbarism. Hans Thimme, a Confessing to conclude that Christianity is useless member, did not specifically lament this, but because of the German Christians? It is instead the passivity on the part of the church. reasonable that one might look at the He said that “the omission of the Confessing Confessing Church’s apolitical stance and be Church is not what wasn’t said in Barmen. appalled. However, to group them with the Rather, the omission lies in the fact that this German Christians is to circumvent the fundamental declaration from Barmen didn’t fundamental values of both. find any continuity in practical It is thus evident that Protestant consequences.”55 Others were to regret this responses to Nazism were neither black nor passivity as well. “[A]fter much time and white, neither fully rejecting nor fully painful experience under Nazism… some accommodating, neither pro-Nazi nor anti- Christians like Martin Niemoller and Kurt Nazi. This corresponds to the weakness of the Schauf believe that the church should have term “Protestant” itself. Statistics show that taken a more prophetic – and openly political sixty-two percent of Germans in 1933 were – role in opposing Nazism.”56 Protestant, but the only possible certain So, then, why did some Protestants conclusion is that that percentage of Germans embrace Nazism, while others rejected it? showed fairly consistent attendance in What prompted the members of the German Protestant congregations. It does not, Christian Movement to take on a host of however, speak to the depth of commitment impossible ideological contradictions? One of any one person or any number of people – could argue that conscience and common it does not suggest how fully Protestantism’s sense figured prominently into Confessing construction of morality and society had Church motivations, into decisions that permeated the lives of that sixty-two percent. recognized the fundamental incongruity of It seems evident that other weltanschaung- Christianity and Nazism. But the same shaping forces were also prevalent in early argument could hardly be considered for the twentieth-century Germany: the values of German Christians. Volk, German strength, and anti-Semitism, to Perhaps, then, an answer to Bergen’s be sure; but also fear, hunger, and the will to question is that there is no humanistic value in live. In other words, the extent of a religion that becomes a “willing participant” ideologically-based resistance to the in genocide. She is partially justified by ideologically-based Nazi state was permeated Conway, who writes that “it has to be and complicated by all of the fears, struggles admitted that, despite the deep detestation and bonds that are common to all people.

54 Bergen, 12. 55 Barnett, 55. 56 Ibid., 72-73. 57 Chandler, 30. Bibliography Chandler Andrew, ed. The Moral Imperative: New Essays on the Ethics of Barnett, Victoria. For the Soul of the Resistance in National Socialist Germany People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler. 1933-1945. Boulder, Colorado: Westview New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Press, 1998.

Barth, Karl. The German Church Ericksen, Robert P. and Susannah Conflict. Trans. P.T.A. Parker. Richmond, Heschel, eds. Betrayal: German Churches Virginia: John Knox Press, 1967. and the Holocaust. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999. Bergen, Doris L. The Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Kershaw, Ian. The Nazi Dictatorship: Reich. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Baltimore, Maryland: Edward Arnold, 1985.

Berger, Peter. “The Sacred Canopy” in Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Sociology of Religion: A Reader. eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Susanne C. Monahan, et al. Upper Saddle Press of Harvard University Press, 2003. River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2001. von Oppen, Beate Ruhm. Religion and Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Resistance in Nazi Germany. Princeton, New Papers from Prison. Trans. Reginald Fuller. Jersey: Center of International Studies, 1971. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1967.

Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.